Rowett, who would like a centre half and a centre forward in an ideal world next month, says: “I think the solution is we’ve got players that need to perform better. We’ve got players that need to show the quality they show in training every day in the game.

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“That’s not a criticism, it’s just a fact. We need to do that to score goals. We need to produce more quality in the final third and we need to bludgeon some goals somehow as well.

“Of course it’s something we will look at in the January window, but as a manager I’m not going to sit here and say we need to keep buying players.

“I don’t think that necessarily is a solution. We’ve got to improve the ones we’ve got, we’ve got to improve the way we play and if we can find one or two players to help that in January, then of course that’s what any manager would want.”

Stoke City manager Gary Rowett at Bolton.

He betrayed his own frustration with his players and their lack of ideas and cutting edge within sight of goal when observing: “We’ve built play up quite well, but once you’re in the final third then it’s a little bit of magic, a little bit of creativity that gets you the goal. And I’ll be honest, we didn’t find that, or not often enough.

“Again, it’s another away game where we’ve actually controlled the game and if you make more of some of those moments and score it opens the game up and it’s very different.